The Tories will have to defend Press freedom again. They can begin by repealing Section 40, as their manifesto pledged.

And then celebrate the defeat of censorship by demanding those they disagree with are censored:

Lords’ lunacy

THE Lords’ latest sickening insult to democracy has surely hammered the final nail in the unelected chamber’s coffin.

Their vote to stay in the single market is beyond belief in its stupidity, arrogance and insane ­willingness to expose the country to dangerous instability.

It would mean surrendering control over immigration for ever — and never actually “leaving” the EU.
That is not Government policy, nor Labour policy. Nor, plainly, is it the will of the Brexit majority which voted for the opposite.

The Lords’ role is to tweak and advise on laws, not impose entirely contrary policies because they don’t like how the country votes. They are telling 17.4million people: “You don’t count. We do.”

How do they imagine Leavers would react if the biggest vote in our history was negated by unelected, ermine-clad party stooges, some on EU pensions?

We genuinely fear the consequences.

It was the Lords, too, who began the attempt to muzzle the Press. They are rotting our democracy from within

THE SUN SAYS The House of Lords will try to muzzle the free press — but we can’t allow it and anyone who values liberty should agree

ON Monday the House of Lords will attempt to muzzle Britain’s free Press.

MPs struck out Ed Miliband’s “Leveson 2” public inquiry proposal last week. It took only days for peers to resurrect it.

Another inquiry would be an obscene waste of time and money and serves no purpose. The public do not want it. Even The Guardian opposes it.

It’s not hard to see why some peers might have a vested interest in silencing the media.

Some have been exposed by the Press for wrongdoing — whether it was fiddling their expenses or having extra-marital affairs.

And many of the Labour peers rooting for it believe their party has been unfairly covered in the media.

They want newspapers they can tame into giving them an easy ride. Well, that is not the role of the Press in a democracy.

The Leveson inquiry and subsequent police probes cost taxpayers more than £48million after dozens of failed trials against journalists.

Leveson’s 2012 report ran to 1,987 pages and contained over a million words. What do these peers seriously think is left to learn?

They are foolish, too, to think the media landscape looks as it once did. Today, Facebook and Google dominate. Most newspapers belong to IPSO, a self-funded, independent regulator that holds the Press to account more than any regulator before.

Then again, this is not really about probing the relationship between cops and the Press, or phone-hacking. That is a Trojan horse.

These politicians, with their celebrity pals at Hacked Off, really just want to see newspapers neutered. This must not be allowed to happen.

Traditionally, the House of Lords respects the Government’s manifesto commitments. The Tory manifesto said they would not pursue the second part of Leveson. That peers have so recklessly binned a constitutional convention is disgraceful.

Britain has slumped in the global ranking for free speech. In the past four years, we have fallen from 30th to 40th. “Leveson 2” would mean we shamefully fall even further.

Our free Press may not be perfect, but it noisily holds power to account. Our country is all the better for it.

JEREMY Corbyn faces fresh anti-Semitism questions today after it emerged he tried to get Eurovision winner Israel banned from the whole contest.

The hard left Labour leader wanted to disqualify the Jewish state from all European sporting and cultural events.

He mounted the controversial bid while a backbench MP, joining forces with a fellow bitter critic of Israel, Lib Dem MP Bob Russell, to sponsor a Commons motion to enforce the move in November 2010, Parliament documents reveal.

The bid would also have seen the Mediterranean country thrown out of European club football competitions such as the Champions League, as well as the European Cup.

Angry MPs last night attacked the proposal and said it suggested a “sinister” attitude toward the Jewish state.

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while the nation is divided and Brexit negotiations are struggling — THEY are largely to blame, for laying siege to the referendum result itself.

Their every word stokes division, helps Brussels and harms Britain.

THE SUN SAYS David Miliband’s arrogance to try and return to UK politics and tell us how to handle Brexit is repugnant

THE arrogance of David Miliband and his diehard Remainer chums is repugnant.

The banana-waving bighead, famous only for bottling one leadership challenge before losing to his little brother and stomping off to New York, now demands we heed his every utterance on Brexit.

And his considered view, alongside Nick Clegg and Tory Nicky Morgan, is we shouldn’t do it.

Sure, we can pretend to leave — but stay in both the customs union and single market, surrendering control of immigration.

They call this tired old argument “Soft Brexit”. Leaving ANY part of the EU is “Hard Brexit” now. It is laughable.

Who do they imagine would tell 17.4million people their votes were to be ignored?

Not Miliband, hiding in Manhattan.

These Remain ultras are blind to the obvious: that the story has moved on.

And that — while the nation is divided and Brexit negotiations are struggling — THEY are largely to blame, for laying siege to the referendum result itself.

Their every word stokes division, helps Brussels and harms Britain.

Back the Press

MPs must kill the second Leveson Inquiry.

There is simply no case in this new, transformed media landscape — far more tightly regulated, yet dominated by UNREGULATED tech giants — for yet another public examination into alleged wrongdoing long ago. That view unites The Sun and the Guardian.

It was dismal seeing one ill-informed peer after another misjudge an issue they clearly had no desire to grasp, then outrageously voting to defy the elected chamber’s decision of just days ago.

For Labour, Leveson 2 would settle a score against critical newspapers like The Sun. For a few Tory MPs too it is a personal grudge.

But their duty is to their constituents.

A rerun of the 2011 inquiry is a pointless, vastly expensive irrelevance now.

All Tories should stand behind their manifesto. And we urge the DUP not to saddle the Government with a new ­burden to which it is staunchly opposed.

There are many better ways of spending public money and voters know it.